Rocket Man

Steve and Emily pose in front of a Saturn 5 rocket at the Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.

     I married a rocket man.  Not a real astronaut, just a guy who has always harbored a secret wish to be one.  I've always known this.  When we were dating he revealed his deep childhood interest in the moon landings.  He remembers exactly where he was when he watched the moon landing on July 20,1969 -- it was in a motel room in Galveston, Texas, on vacation with his family.  (I may have been in Texas, too, though I don't specifically remember where -- that was the summer my family moved from Atlanta to San Antonio.)  He has committed to memory all manner of facts pertaining to the Apollo missions.  And the sole reason Steve signed up for HBO was so we could watch Tom Hanks' "From the Earth to the Moon" series several years ago (well worth it, by the way).  Not surprisingly, this year, on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, Steve made it a point to watch the corresponding episode of "From the Earth to the Moon" to commemorate the event. 

     During our courtship, Steve also confessed his lifelong obsession with fireworks and rockets; to prove it, he brought along his decades-old stash of bottle rockets and model rockets when we moved in together.  The items were contained in a shoebox, carefully preserved like sacred family heirlooms.  Over the years the box moved from the back of a closet shelf to the storage room in our apartment building.  When we moved into our house it found a permanent home in the basement.  There it stayed until our son was in junior high.  When Greg was old enough to handle such items without burning himself (we hoped), Steve got them out and dusted them off.  Unfortunately, they hadn't fared well in storage, so Steve went out and bought another model rocket kit.  Last summer he and Greg made a trek to Shawnee Mission Park to launch the rocket.  They did.  It shot into the air and landed . . . somewhere.  It supposedly landed in a grove of trees, but it might as well have landed in the Pacific Ocean; Steve and Greg never found it.  Thus, Steve's brief career as an astronaut came to an abrupt end.

     But not his endless fascination with the cosmos!  Just a week and a half ago we drove out to the country to take part in what has been an annual tradition since before Greg was born:  Watching the Perseid meteor shower.  Just after midnight on Wednesday, August 12th, we packed lawn chairs and blankets in the van and drove out to our favorite spot, just off the aptly named Evening Star Road in western Johnson County.  We set up the chairs and blanket on a grassy area next to the road, let our eyes adjust to the darkness, and peered up at the sky.  Even though the moon was fairly bright that night, we still saw numerous meteors streaking across the sky, many bright enough to leave a trail.  The meteors tend to originate in the northeastern part of the sky, near the constellation Perseus (who, in Greek mythology, cut off the head of the snake-haired demon, Medusa).  The meteors typically travel from northeast to southwest.  This year's shower did not disappoint!  When Greg was younger, we often brought his cousins or friends with us.  We used to make an evening of it -- take in a drive-in movie, head out to Evening Star Road to watch the meteors afterward, and then take all the kids back to our house to spend the night.  This year it was scaled down -- no movie, friends, or even snacks -- just the three of us.  But we wouldn't miss it.  No matter how many times we've gone out Perseid-watching, we have never tired of it.

     We haven't limited our star-gazing to the Perseids, though.  A few times we've traveled back out to Evening Star Road in November to watch the Leonid meteor shower.  Of course, it's colder then and favorable weather conditions less likely.  Still, one of my favorite memories is the autumn evening in 1996 that Steve and I took Greg, then 4 years old, to the Powell Observatory near Louisburg, Kansas to watch the Hale-Bopp Comet.  There was a long line to go inside and observe the comet through the big telescope, so we elected to take our fidgety child outside to one of the many telescopes set up on the observatory grounds.  Hale-Bopp was so bright, we hardly needed a telescope at all -- much more satisfying than the faint Haley's Comet ten years earlier! 

     The "final frontier" also played a part in some of our vacations over the years.  On the way to Colorado in 1998 we spent several hours at the Kansas Cosmosphere in Hutchinson, home to many space program artifacts, including the Apollo 13 capsule (eerie!).  The following year we visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where we toured the original control room for the Apollo missions and had our picture taken in front of the massive Saturn 5 rocket displayed on the grounds (see photo above).  About that time, Greg was into his "Star Wars" phase, so he and his dad were in spaceman heaven visiting all the interactive exhibits.  No surprise, then that Greg is taking an astronomy class this year in school -- and it's already one of his favorites.  Steve is very proud!

     Just to be clear, I enjoy these activities as much as my family does, although I'm not so obsessed with all the facts and figures.  My interest in watching the comets and meteors is more aesthetic than scientific, which is probably why my favorite star-gazing memory is from a trip out west we took two summers ago.  We were visiting Mesa Verde in southwestern Colorado.  We spent the day touring the centuries-old cliff dwellings and then spent the night at the lodge in the park.  With no television service available and no other activities except for a sparsely-furnished game room, Steve and I decided to take a walk outside around the lodge.  All of a sudden a generator failed and all of the lights went out save for a couple of battery-powered emergency lights in the main lobby.  But the sudden plunge into darkness revealed a truly wondrous and beautiful display in the night sky.  From our vantage point standing there on top of the mesa, the sky looked like a rich carpet of stars, so close you could almost touch them.  We sat down on the ground and just stared up at this celestial tapestry -- even saw a couple of meteors  streak across the sky!  We marveled that it was so quiet (we could hear the breeze blowing through the trees, and the far-off howl of a coyote), and we noted that this must be what the ancient cliff dwellers saw every night.  In that moment we felt more connected to the people who had lived there so long ago, and we never would have noticed if not for the power outage.

     I bring all of this up because today is my husband's birthday.  We seldom give each other gifts for our birthdays; we usually just go out to dinner together.  But this year, with the 40th anniversary observance of the moon landing and the passing of NASA devotee Walter Cronkite last month, space has been a frequent topic of conversation at our house.  So, when I saw the commemorative "moon" books at a bookstore a few weeks ago, Steve's birthday gift became a no-brainer.  Greg and I presented him with the books last night, and he was (naturally) delighted.

     Happy Birthday, Rocket Man -- thanks for keeping the stars in my eyes!